Toppy 5800 which has been faithful for years. Must confess HD is almost full (about 15 hours recording space left on 160GB). Switched on tonight and was immediately asked to format HDD yes or no. Cannot access "archive" therefore cannot watch any recorded programmes. Cannot record new ones either?
Otherwise machine operating fine!
Anyone any ideas as my wife has tons of old prigs she wants to watch!

The disk may have been corrupted by a poor quality signal.
However, it may also have been corrupted because you are running with so little free space (anything could happen if space runs out)

Assuming you recover the data with TopfHDRW, suggest you delete some large files so that free space is not so low (e.g. identify some long films that you haven't yet watched; delete them and set up a search so that they get recorded when they are next broadcast).

I am working on a program similar to TopfHDRW but I don't expect that will be ready for two months (possibly longer) ie. TopfHDRW is the only recovery mechanism available.

Note: I seem to remember that someone recently (in last 3? months) reported that they didn't format the disk when requested. After they had replaced the capacitors in the PSU, the disk worked without problem. You might also be lucky!

Toppy 5800 which has been faithful for years. Must confess HD is almost full (about 15 hours recording space left on 160GB). Switched on tonight and was immediately asked to format HDD yes or no. Cannot access "archive" therefore cannot watch any recorded programmes. Cannot record new ones either?